“You,” I say, pointing at the man with the aggressive posture. “You don’t agree.”
“Do I?” he asks.
“I didn’t ask you a question; I require a statement,” I say.
“You come here, puppet, like a bitch and take what was never yours. Women don’t have a say here,” he says. “We should take and fuck you.”
Men are really the most disgusting thing on the planet. After pigeons. But not even those scare me right now.
“Try me,” I say silently.
“I am no fool,” he says. “You will shoot me, like you shot him, murderer.”
Murderer.
“I am no murderer,” I say. “I fulfilled a dying man’s wish.”
Silence. And I let him sit with it.
“Also, I don’t need to shoot you because I can beat you up with my hands alone. Ask the woman downstairs, she got quite a bit of that,” I say, and add carelessly. “But if you rather wish me to shoot you now, who am I to deny?”
He laughs arrogantly.
“A girl can’t beat me up,” he says and flexes his muscles.
My eyes flash to the silent man in the back; he is watching intensely.
“Well,” I say. “You better prove it then. No guns, I honour the spoken word as the highest law.”
I silently congratulate myself for acting and speaking like a criminal.
He scoffs.
“Big mouth and nothing behind?” I know I am provoking him.But I need this win. It also couldn’t be any better. Those men who are all muscle and no brain are the easiest to immobilise, because they don’t train flexibility. They train force, but force is easily eliminated by the right movement and conversions. They also don’t have the speed of someone who has trained in different martial arts.
“Come on, show me what you got,” I say, and add. “Pussy.”
It is the one word that pushes him over the edge. He storms at me, calling me something in Scilian, tries to hit me, but I duck, jump out of the way, grab his arm, make him fall with my leg, and he’s on the floor with my knee on his spine, pulling up his arm behind his back.
“I don’t need a gun,” I say and pull his arm higher. He screams.
“I know ways to knock you out with one grip, one punch, one hit,” I say dangerously, watching how the silent man in the back reacts. “I will let you go now. You will kneel in front of me and be a good boy until I tell you otherwise. If not, we can repeat this until you understand thatIam the boss now.”
I have to laugh internally at my own acting performance. But it feels like everything in my life has prepared me for this.
Maybe it has,says the voice in my mind. My father and Giuseppe have arranged my life. Maybe they pushed me in that direction.
Or maybe you were born for this,says another voice. The one I have encountered in self-reflection and meditation. The voice with grandiose thoughts, but I have chosen not to act on them. I am kind. And caring. Well, to those who deserve it. But then, all of these men here, including the one to my feet, are all a product of bad decisions and external influences, and I will extend them the benefit of the doubt.
Once upon a time, when I started studying psychology, I thought every human was good in their nature. And then I made my master's in criminology; it was a rough awakening.
I myself thought I was a good person. And now I killed someone. I killed someone when I was young. I didn’t even remember that until I pulled the trigger on Giuseppe. It was the flash, the feeling, the tension in my muscles, and suddenly the images flooded back. But I don’t have an emotional connection to any of them.
I killed, although I was convinced I was a good person. And it doesn’t do anything to me. Just like Kat. Just like Rosalia.
I am no better than they are.
And it leaves me wondering whether we humans are more evil than good.
